


Relics

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Historical, M/M, Panic Attacks, Renaissance Italy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 17:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15667893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: "Maybe we're both just relics." -The Shape Of WaterA follow-up to my other fic Renaissance.





	Relics

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to tenner who said that the PWP i wrote last week had "very rich story and characterization going on in the subtext" without which i probably wouldn't have written this *finger guns*

Crowley had made plans to drag Aziraphale around Rome but, as it turned out, they weren’t necessary. Being out in the sun again seemed to fill Aziraphale up like a good wine, and Crowley privately reflected that it was a good thing he’d stepped in when he did or the angel might have spent the next hundred years in the same musty old church. They sat by the fountain, chatting about nothing in particular, and Aziraphale seemed fine, more than fine. He seemed happy.

Eventually they grew tired of sitting, and so they wandered through the streets together, Aziraphale letting out little exclamations of pleasure or surprise at the new architectural designs rising up across the city. They passed an obelisk at one point, and Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s hand to stop him as he looked at it.

“Aziraphale?”   

“Has this been moved?” Aziraphale gestured towards the obelisk.

Crowley’s heart, which had begun to do funny things when Aziraphale had taken his hand, sunk as he stared at his friend in concern.

“The people of Rome have been taking obelisks from Egypt for at least a thousand years, angel.”

Aziraphale let out a frustrated sound and turned to give Crowley a very condescending look.

“I know that, you absolutely ridiculous— _this specific obelisk_. Has it been moved again since it arrived here in the 300s, to your knowledge?”

“Oh!” Crowley exclaimed, feeling himself flush with embarrassment. “I’m not sure but it’s entirely possible. They’re digging things up all the time, recently. Likely it was buried for a while and they just rediscovered it while they were trying to put in a new sewer system, or some other building project.”

“I see.” Aziraphale turned back to the obelisk, his lips pursed in thought. He hadn’t let go of Crowley.

“Angel—” Crowley started to say, staring down at their clasped hands, but Aziraphale cut him off.

“Do you ever worry that someday we’ll... I don’t know…” Aziraphale began desperately, but then he blinked and shook his head. “Never mind.” He let Crowley’s fingers slide through his.

Crowley looked at Aziraphale, trying to gauge what, exactly, that had been about, but Aziraphale wouldn’t meet his eyes and was already heading down another side street. Crowley hurried to follow him.

The pair continued their meandering journey around the city, Aziraphale continuing to look at the elements that had been there for generations with the same thoughtful, somewhat mournful expression. Crowley, who thought he knew what was going on in his head, tried and failed several times to turn Aziraphale’s attention to more immediate pleasures. It wasn’t until very late in the afternoon that Aziraphale finally gave in to his prodding to stop and have something to eat together.

Aziraphale perked up again once he had eaten, and Crowley was in no real hurry to leave the small shaded table they were sitting at, so he bought them a second bottle of wine and they passed an hour reminiscing as the sun went down. Rome always made Aziraphale nostalgic and Crowley supposed it probably always would. The city could stand for another two millennia, changing and evolving, uncovering some bits of its past and burying others as it went, and if they came back here in five hundred years they could relive this same day, more or less, all over again. Finding out which landmarks remained and which were gone. Drinking together. Watching the sun set.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said suddenly, cutting him off in the middle of a long-winded retelling of a story Crowley had heard probably ten times before, “are you going to be alright?”

Aziraphale blinked at him. The orange-gold light of evening made him look softer, somehow, than he had done since Crowley had found him yesterday. The way it played in his hair was oddly evocative. It reminded Crowley of something, what was it? It was right on the edge of his consciousness, right out of reach in his memory.

The light glinted off Aziraphale’s glasses as he inclined his head to look at Crowley more closely and Crowley realized he was gripping the edges of their table so hard it hurt.

“My dear,” Aziraphale responded, his voice low and soothing and his expression very, very concerned, “are you?”

Fire. That was what the light made him think of. Fire, and Aziraphale screaming, and Crowley trying desperately to push his way through the crowd to reach him before it was too late, and his face, oh _god_ , the way the light had lit up his face from underneath—

“Oh, Crowley.” Aziraphale sighed in a language long dead, Akkadian or Aramaic or Ancient Greek, Crowley wasn’t sure. Aziraphale had taken his hand again and was murmuring to him, still in whatever tongue he’d decided was more appropriate than the Italian spoken by the people surrounding them. “We’re both alright, my dear. It’s over.” He was rubbing circles against Crowley’s skin with his thumb as he spoke, and it was this, more than anything, that forced Crowley back to the present.

“Come back to my rooms with me?” Crowley asked, taking a shaky breath and pulling his hands out of Aziraphale’s grasp as he stood up. Aziraphale hesitated for a moment, looking like he wanted to say something else, but he got up and nodded, miracling the money to pay for their meal onto the table before falling into step beside Crowley.

They didn’t talk much on the way. The path from the restaurant to the place Crowley had been staying took them across the Tiber and they stopped for a moment to lean against the sturdy brick of the bridge. It was one of the old ones, Crowley noted with a small, quickly stifled laugh. They’d probably crossed it together before, in the third century or the fifth or the fourteenth or the seventh century BC. Aziraphale put an arm around Crowley’s shoulder and gave him a small squeeze as they both looked down into the river.

They made it back to Crowley’s rooms just as the sun set in earnest. Crowley didn’t bother to light any lamps once they were safely inside, instead standing in the twilight and watching Aziraphale as he folded his overcoat carefully over the back of a chair.

“What now, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, stepping towards him in the dim room. Crowley sighed and closed his eyes momentarily as Aziraphale’s hands came up to cup his face. The angel was so infuriatingly gentle with him. Crowley pulled himself free of Aziraphale’s touch, eyes roving around the dim room and landing on the bed. He felt himself move as if on autopilot, pressing his hands into Aziraphale’s chest and pushing him back.

He made quick work of Aziraphale’s clothes as he laid him down, ignoring his friend’s sounds of protest. First the doublet, then the chemise. The hose he simply vanished rather than struggling with; his hands were shaking too badly for him to trust himself not to rip them. Aziraphale caught him by the wrists as he made to nudge the angel’s thighs apart, kneeling at the foot of the bed.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale said, quietly but firmly, sitting up and wriggling out of reach as Crowley made to press a kiss to his cock, half-hard despite his objections. “Stop.”

Crowley snarled, trying for a moment to pull himself out of Aziraphale’s grip, and then he stopped. He laid his face against the bedclothes between Aziraphale’s legs with a shuddering sigh. The grip on his wrists loosened and vanished, and for a moment Crowley tensed as Aziraphale’s fingers came to rest on the back of his head. But the angel was stroking through his hair, petting him gently, and Crowley’s breath came in another choked sigh.

They didn’t talk. Crowley doubted Aziraphale would have known what to say. But he pulled Crowley up, removed his clothes as well, and tucked him into bed before climbing in beside him and resuming running his fingers though his hair, pushing it back from his forehead and settling Crowley against him.

Crowley didn’t, as a rule, cry. But with Aziraphale there, whole and well and treating him so gently, as though he was a thing worthy of love and not the thing that had sent the angel to his death the last time they’d been together, was too much. He sobbed against Aziraphale, the soft shushing sounds the angel made only making him feel more wretched.

“It’s alright, my dear, it’s alright. You’re safe.” He was rubbing Crowley’s back slowly, soothingly.

Crowley let out a watery laugh. “S’not me I’m worried about, angel.” He mumbled, not daring to look up from where he still had his head buried in Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Oh?” Aziraphale’s hand stilled on his back for a moment, then started up again as he gave a small sigh of his own. “Oh _, my dear_.” He kissed the top of Crowley’s head. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. I don’t blame you in the slightest.”

“Maybe you should.” Crowley choked out. “I should have done something to stop it. D’you know, it wasn’t until afterwards, when I was running away like the traitor I am, that it occurred to me I could have—I could have killed them, I could have miracle you away from there, I could have—”

“You’re not a traitor, you were afraid and you were panicking. And you couldn’t have miracled me away, they had some fairly powerful binding spells set up. Nor could you have killed them.” Aziraphale’s hand trailed up his spine and settled in his hair. “You couldn’t have killed them even if it had occurred to you. I know you, my dear.” There was a small smile in his voice, something almost like pride.

“I should have killed them.” Crowley growled, the hand on Aziraphale’s chest twitching reflexively. Aziraphale took it in his other hand and threaded their fingers together.

“Would it have made you feel better?” He asked.

“No.” Crowley answered, truthfully. “But they would have deserved it.”

“What are you always saying about humans?”

Crowley snorted. “That they do the worst of it to themselves? That’s all well and good, angel, but I won’t have them doing their worst to _you_.”

Aziraphale nuzzled his nose against Crowley’s hair and pressed another kiss to his temple. “While I appreciate the sentiment, darling, we both know it matters far less what humans do to us, in the grand scheme of things. _We_ can always come back.”

Crowley opened his mouth to retort, knowing after thousands of years when Aziraphale was being flippant for the sake of Crowley's nerves, and found he had no idea what to say. His mind was snagging on the endearment Aziraphale had just uttered. “ _What_ did you just call me?”

Aziraphale shifted slightly underneath him. “Darling.” His tone was steady, sure, and Crowley’s chest felt tight as Aziraphale’s fingers continued stroking through his hair.

“I…” _don’t deserve that_ , Crowley thought but did not say, but Aziraphale seemed to hear it anyway, because he rolled Crowley over onto his back.

“You are,” he sighed, placing a delicate kiss over Crowley’s heart and smiling indulgently at the squeak of surprise it elicited, “my darling,” he kissed Crowley’s collarbone and Crowley let out a hiss of pleasure, “my dear,” Aziraphale said against his neck before kissing the sensitive spot below Crowley’s ear, “my Crowley.” Crowley’s hand, which had flown up to fist in Aziraphale’s hair, relaxed as the angel pulled away to look at him. His lips were very close, and Crowley stared up at him breathlessly for a moment before pulling him down to kiss him, a long, slow, deep kiss that left Crowley feeling slightly dizzy.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley whispered, not really planning what was coming next, just for the pleasure of saying the angel’s name. Aziraphale responded by pressing another brief kiss to his lips before going back to his neck, one hand sliding down to tease across his thigh. He knew, somehow, exactly what Crowley wanted, and gave it to him. He always did.

“It isn’t really over though, is it,” Crowley murmured much later, as the first grey light of dawn began to creep in through the window and Aziraphale held him, warm and comfortable.

“Does it really matter?” Aziraphale said, his voice heavy with sleep. Aziraphale rarely slept, Crowley knew, but on occasion they’d gone to sleep together, and Crowley never tired of waking up to find Aziraphale was still beside him.

“It might,” Crowley said, and what he meant was, _I can’t lose you, not for real, not in the end_. What he meant was, _we’re going to be here when it all stops for good and I don’t know if I want that if it means we won’t be together_. What he meant was, _I know why you keep coming back to this beautiful, ephemeral, shifting palimpsest of a city and I know when you're putting on a brave face and I know that the world isn't who you put on that face for_. What he meant was, _I love you, impossibly, ineffably, I love you_.

Aziraphale yawned, and his breath tickled Crowley’s neck. “Go back to sleep, my dear.” The angel pulled him closer, nuzzling into his hair, and Crowley closed his eyes. The world would continue to change around them, carrying them with it into something new, but here, together, there was quiet. For just a little while, everything was still.


End file.
